The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems

Words plus words relate the poet's reaction to anything; for example, his secret identity: the room is empty, and the window is open

These 67 prose poems could be from Hamlet's writing tablet: investigating madness, they search for truth. Poet, translator, winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, Simic tries to make sense of a world that like "the old river . . . in its confusion sometimes forgets and flows backwards." Ancestors undergo mysterious "dark and evil days" (a man exchanges clothes with a dog, heaven is full of "little shrunken deaf ears instead of stars") that test their sanity. From the best of these sophisticated fables of trial by ordeal, wry intensity flashes. On "the verge of understanding," "in a forest of question marks," Simic's work, mingling Rimbaud and Socrates, startles us into meditation.
- Frank Allen, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.